Ploughing a familiar furrow

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

12/12/12, 8:05 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 9:22 PM CET

The well-trodden path between the Commission and ministerial office

Rollcalls of agricultural meetings in the Council of Ministers currently contain two names particularly familiar to members of the European Commission’s agriculture department. One is Risto Artjoki, the other is José Diogo Santiago de Albuquerque. Both are currently junior agriculture ministers – Artjoki for Finland and Diogo Santiago for Portugal – and both took temporary leave from the Commission to serve their country.

They are following in the footsteps of Jaime Silva, who was a Commission agriculture official, then served for four years as Portugal’s minister for agriculture, from 2005 to 2009, and for six months in 2007 chaired agricultural meetings in the Council, during Portugal’s presidency. Silva subsequently returned to the Commission, where he is now deputy director-general for enterprise.

So the path between the Commission and ministerial office is well-trodden. One Savvas Tsitouridis recently took up a post in the department, tasked with monitoring the application of agricultural legislation, infringements and complaints. He is a two-time minister in Greece, first (for a brief seven months in 2004) for rural development and food and then (for 14 months in 2006-07) as minister for employment and social protection, but recently lost his seat in the national parliament. Tsitouridis was an official in Brussels for 11 years, some of them in the agriculture department – but he left as long ago as 1996. However, given events in Greece, any port in a storm…